JOURNAL
JOURNAL
WILD BLUE MOUNTAINS
CASTLE HEAD ABSEIL 10 June 2023 I had waited for the vegetation to regrow and rocks to fall down after the bushfires and heavy rains before contemplating abseiling Castle Head. When the club put it on the program, I took the chance! I was pleasantly surprised to see how the vegetation had reclaimed the area. The six abseils are not difficult but getting to some of them can be delicate due to the exposure: the fire-damaged small trees are not […]
A NICE GULLY 7 June 2023 This was a last minute trip to explore a gully in the Blue Mountains. A ledge and a hand line led us down to a gully which sheltered a nice rainforest. After exploring the gully and its mostly dry waterfalls we made our way downstream until we were stopped by a pool of water which, sensibly, none of us wanted to cross – this will be a summer project. We found an exit up […]
KEDUMBA WALLS NORTH HR 3 June 2023 The call came on Wednesday: RFS crews were needed to assist National Parks with a hazard reduction (HR) at Chester Road on Kings Tableland. The weather looked promising: light winds and no rain… Crews from RFS, Parks and Fire and Rescue arrived at the staging area. The briefing was finished by 09:00, the yummy Blackheath Deli sandwiches dispatched, and we were in our sector waiting for the burn to start. In the meantime, […]
JUGGLERS CANYON 2 June 2023 Kevin was in the mood for a canyon! I was in the mood for something dry: Jugglers Canyon fitted the bill! We drove on Pilcher Point Fire Trail to find the gate closed at the airfield! A quick check on the National Parks website: cars were not welcome but humans were! So we walked to the head of the Jugglers track. We were soon at the first (optional) abseil near the waterfall. Kevin indulged me […]
GUZZLERS ARCH 31 May 2023 Bill and John had tried to find the arch previously and ended up benighted by the vegetation. Armed with a 6-figure reference for Guzzlers Arch, we set off to Deep Pass. After climbing on the ridge on the other side of Deep Pass, the group organically split in two: one wisely followed a track, the other – of which I was – contoured the hill, the rationale was to follow a cliff line and have […]
THE ENGINEERS TRACK 24 May 2023 This was a spur-of-the-moment walk. Chris had never walked the Engineers Track so we obliged! After some kerfuffling, we finally found the track. It had been 18 months since I had last been there and the vegetation was doing its thing: growing! The track was in good enough nick but towards the Grose River it was anything but as Mother Nature was reclaiming what was hers!During the compulsory tea break we considered our options. […]
MGA NORTH 22 May 2022 MGA NORTH I came across this term last week when someone mentioned MGA North during an instructor training course. MGA stands for Map Grid of Australia. It is a projected coordinate system using a Transverse Mercator projection with zones 6 degrees wide and based on the Geocentric Datum of Australia (GDA). The projected coordinate system associated with GDA94 is the Map Grid of Australia 1994 (MGA94). While the map projection associated with GDA2020 is the […]
NAVIGATION INSTRUCTORS WORKSHOP – DAY 02 20 May 2023 The day promised to be cold and it did deliver. We continued on with the classroom material and plotted our points for the navigation exercise. We left for Sunny Corner State Forest and soon enough we were at the “obstacle” which proved too much for some of the PCs. Only two RFS vehicles and a 4WD made it to the top: with no diff lock and city tyres, it was not […]
NAVIGATION INSTRUCTORS WORKSHOP – DAY 01 20 May 2023 Operational Field Support had organised a workshop for the Operate in Remote Environments (ORE) course instructors. ORE is a qualification required for all remote area firefighters.The workshop was delivered by Way-Finder. Most of the day was spent in the classroom. We discussed group dynamics and better ways of presenting map reading and navigation topics. Our instructors introduced some basic navigation exercises and soon enough we hoped in our PCs and were […]
TEETERING CLIFFS – MAELSTROM CAVE 17 May 2023 Yuri wanted to revisit this area off the D’Arcy Range before the gate was shut. The word “teetering” did not inspire confidence: I imagined small precarious cliff ledges – it was a Yuri walk after all! We descended the slope and reached the cliff line level stopping to look at caves/overhangs and the marvelous sandstone patters. The teetering cliffs materialised: no smooth walls, just a bunch of large rocks thrown together: it […]
